9 sources of free images for projects

Images can be useful to teachers and learners in lots of ways. They can illuminate writing, clarify presentations, illustrate posters, and much more. Most of us lack either the time or talent to take new photos or draw new pictures whenever a need arises. We rely on “the cloud.”

A Google image search is the quick-but-lazy way out. It gives no indication of who created the picture and leaves us with fair use dilemmas. As an alternative, I routinely find great material in (1) Flickr’s massive collection of Creative-Commons-released photographs … but Flickr doesn’t always have what I need.

In Free Images for Your Projects, Tony Vincent (Learning in Hand) demonstrates three great collections. (2) Pixabay is one I use and heartily recommend. The other two are (3) openclipart and (4) The Noun Project. The former is useful, but I really love the latter. The Noun Project has hundreds and hundreds of icons and symbols, most of which are available with a Creative Commons license. I found several images that I expect to use in my spring multimedia course.

I also recommend these sites to my students:

5. 4FreePhotos
6. Wikimedia Commons
7. stock.exchg (for-pay images above the free ones)
8. everystockphoto
9. Creative Commons

[Image credit:adapted from Photo Gallery by Q. Li from The Noun Project]